After I read Kal Penn’s memoir, I was pretty salty about how it just barely even mentioned being not-straight1For lack of a better description, since I don’t know exactly whether Kal Penn identifies as gay, bisexual, queer, etc., and instead treated it as if had been a non-issue. He casually says that in his mid-20s, his friends already “knew that [he] was dating dudes;” he makes a passing reference about figuring out his sexuality; and he has a chapter about his partner that is more about NASCAR than anything else.
That’s pretty much it. It stands out because so much of the book is about facing discrimination as an Indian-American working in Hollywood, or as an actor (at the time primarily known for his work in stoner comedies) working in the Obama Administration, but makes absolutely zero attempt at describing any kind of intersectionality with his sexual orientation.
It’s been bugging me for the last few weeks, since I’ve been wondering how much, if at all, my criticism makes me a hypocrite.
To be absolutely clear: I’m a very strong believer in privacy and self-determination. No one is obligated at all to share personal details of their lives with the public. No one is obligated to come out, no matter their story or their prominence.2The only possible exception there is for public figures who have openly opposed LGBT rights specifically, and even then, it should only be reserved for the most toxic and hypocritical. The reason this is an exception is because it’s important to distinguish hypocrisy and/or self-loathing homophobia from actual sane, rational public policy. I know if I’d been outed before I was ready, it would’ve been so devastating that I’m not sure I would’ve survived it. Everyone, no matter how famous, deserves to be in control over what they make public and what they keep private.
Which is why I came to the ultimate conclusion that it was a missed opportunity, more than a fault, that Kal Penn chose not to talk at all about his experiences as a gay or bisexual man. I probably could’ve gone without the names of his elementary school classmates in favor of a line or two about what it was like being LGBT and fairly famous in the early 2000s. If it were such a non-issue that it didn’t deserve mention in a memoir that was largely about discrimination — great! I’d have been fascinated to hear that, too, because I would love to know that it wasn’t as traumatic and anxiety-inducing for everyone else as it was for me. But the way the book is written, it doesn’t read as “it was a non-issue” so much as “I’m steadfastly refusing to go into any detail about this subject.” But still: fair enough.
Except…
Because he writes about his time working for the Obama campaign and then administration, Kal Penn’s avoidance of the topic reminds me too strongly of Obama’s avoidance. And my ongoing irritation seeing revisionist histories making Obama out to be some kind of “champion” of gay rights.
I still believe that Obama was the best President of the United States in my lifetime (although that’s not a very high bar, honestly), but that has a gigantic asterisk for any LGBT people who went through his campaign and first terms waiting for his take on gay rights to “evolve.”
Yes, the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was a victory — but I always got the impression that it was done out of optics, not idealism. And it benefitted far fewer LGBT Americans than the end of DOMA and the realization of marriage equality. Which was something that Obama opposed during his campaign, claiming that it was incompatible with his Christian beliefs, and that it should be left for the states to decide.3The latter was the part that offended me more, having the first black President using the same argument that had been used to delay civil rights for black people for decades.
David Axelrod wrote a book to take the bullet for Obama, insisting that the opposition was his idea, and that Obama was pro-gay the whole time. I guess that was supposed to sound better? To me, it just sounds like “Oh, nah, he didn’t actually believe in any of that shit he said! He likes gays fine; y’all were just the minority he was willing to throw under the bus to win the votes of people that hated him.”
Whatever the case, I don’t think it’s necessary to deny the truth while praising all of the accomplishments of the Obama administration. And the truth as I remember it is that gay rights — marriage equality in particular — was a hot potato that Obama happily ran away from for years until he was forced to do something about it.4If you insist on crediting anyone in the administration, instead of all the LGBT activists who’d been pressing the issue for decades, then give credit to Joe Biden for displaying some actual damn-the-repercussions integrity about this issue.
I saw Kal Penn’s memoir at a queer book fair5Which surprised me, since I’d been completely unaware he’d come out at all, so that undoubtedly set my expectations for the book that it wasn’t trying to live up to. Penn isn’t obligated to make his life story all about The Gay Stuff, but I will roll my eyes a bit when he mentions the repeal of DADT as having personal importance for him, when he spends almost the entirety of the book Don’t Telling.
And the reason it’s crucial to take a clear-eyed look at this part of the Obama Administration, and how they responded to Clinton’s abject failure at responding to the Republicans’ culture war. Because the next phase of the culture war is in progress, and they’re doing the exact same bullshit to trans people that they spent years doing to gay men and lesbians. It would be stupid to say that Obergefell v Hodges happened during the Obama Administration and therefore, Obama was a champion of LGBT rights. The present moment needs a much better response from the government than we got last time.